CFP Ways of Knowing: Dismantling the Divide between Social and Natural Sciences in Weather & Climate Research

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Last Updated on Friday, 30 July 2010 06:23 Written by Randy Peppler posted by R McKeon

Regardless of time and place, our lives are played out against a background of weather and climate. Some of the most fundamental elements of the human experience have to do with weather and climate: how we adapt to them, how we make them meaningful, and, of course, how we talk about them. Research from the social sciences seeks to understand how “Our complex forms of collective life influence the way that we are affected by weather and climate, creating both forms of vulnerability and capacities to reduce impacts” (Strauss and Orlove, Weather Climate, Culture, 2003).

Social science disciplines, with their attention to human society and relationships between individuals and groups, stand to make meaningful contributions to research on weather and climate. We seek to facilitate these contributions by opening pathways of communication between disciplines, and between natural and social scientists, so that our respective theories, methodologies, and epistemologies – how we know what we know - can be respected beyond our own fields. Understanding the value and rigor of each other’s approaches is an essential first step to enhancing communication between scholars working at the interface of weather, climate, and society.

Our session will bring together scholars from diverse social science disciplines who are working at the interface of weather, climate, and society to engage with the meteorological community and present on how their theories, methodologies, and epistemologies result in rigorous research findings. We are particularly interested in contributions that display how these practitioners approach their research and the types of knowledge they produce, along with examples of research results resulting from these efforts. In the spirit of the meeting theme, communication, we will have a two-part session. In the first part a panel of social scientists will respond to questions about their disciplinary approach, followed by research presentations that show how different epistemologies have been put into practice in the second part. Please submit abstracts for an oral or poster presentation based on an aspect of your research that highlights your epistemological, methodological, or theoretical approach.

Please first contact Heather Lazrus ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and Randy Peppler ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) with your intentions (title and abstract) if you are interested in participating in this session. The call for papers for the annual meeting can be found at http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual/call.html - scroll down to “Sixth Symposium on Policy and Socio-economic Research.” Abstracts should then be submitted electronically by August 2, 2010, at http://ams.confex.com/ams/91Annual/oasys.epl (scroll down to the appropriate link for this symposium: Sixth Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research). It is important for you to coordinate with us so that we can make sure your paper is placed in our session.

An abstract fee of $95 (payable by credit card or purchase order) is charged at the time of submission (refundable only if abstract is not accepted). The $95 abstract fee includes the submission of your abstract, the posting of your extended abstract, and the uploading and recording of your presentation, which will be archived on the AMS Web site.

Authors of accepted presentations will be notified via e-mail by late-September 2010. All extended abstracts are to be submitted electronically and will be available on-line via the web. Instructions for formatting extended abstracts will be posted on the web site. Extended abstracts (file size up to 3 MB) are highly encouraged to be uploaded before the conference. Late extended abstracts or changes to posted extended abstracts can be made up until 23 February 2011. All abstracts, extended abstracts and presentations will be available on the AMS Web site at no cost.

We look forward to seeing you in Seattle!

Note from July 30, 2010

This is a reminder that the abstract submission deadline for the AMS Sixth Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research, and in particular our session "Ways of Knowing: Dismantling the Divide", is rapidly approaching, though we have it on reasonable authority that this deadline will be extended to August 13. Nevertheless, please consider submitting an abstract for our session as soon as possible. As the Call below indicates, please let Heather Lazrus and I know that you are doing so, and as an added piece of information, when you are on the AMS abstract submission website (http://ams.confex.com/ams/91Annual/oasys.epl), please select the "Topic" called "Policy and Socio-Economic Research Methods and their Applications." Best, Heather Lazrus and Randy Peppler Randy A. Peppler Associate Director, NOAA OAR Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies Director, ARM Climate Research Facility Data Quality Office PhD Candidate, Department of Geography The University of Oklahoma 120 David L. Boren Blvd., Suite 2100 Norman, OK 73072-7304 Voice: 405-325-6667; Cell: 405-822-7636; FAX: 405-325-3098